I didn't feel I had to prove anything more.

I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do.

My strength was that I am more balanced and calmer than most other riders.

If I had been born with an aggressive character, then maybe my palmares would have been longer.

Everybody tells me that I never look as if I'm suffering. But, when I watch videotapes of a race, I always remember the pain I had to endure.

I did try to win a sixth, but it was not to be.

To be free and to live a free life - that is the most beautiful thing there is.

Sooner or later a rider will emerge who will win more Tours. In every sport we have seen how the records eventually get broken and cycling is no exception.

Anger is a super weapon given by god...with a catch...the more you use it the less effective it becomes.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

I believe in intuition and approaching things as instant gratification. Just do the things you want to do, make the kind of pictures you want to make.

the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of science.

Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood.

You can't expect everything to happen all at once when it's been such a male-dominated world for so long.

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.

You never know how things are going to turn out, however much you plan. But you already know that.

Everybody's in love when they're eighteen. And everybody gets dumped.

I'll probably be punished for hard living.